This is Chesterton's
most famous novel. On its face it appears to be a detective story filled with
politics and intrigue par excellence. Moving through this literary masterpiece
it becomes clear that this thriller is nothing less than the mystery of creation
itself. Upon its debut critics called The Man Who Was Thursday “amazingly
clever,” “a remarkable acrobatic performance”, and “a
scurrying, door-slamming farce that ends like a chapter in the Apocalypse.”

Drawing on
contemporary fears of anarchist conspiracies and bomb outrages, the setting
is firmly set in its time and place - turn of the century London - but it also
defies temporal boundaries. Police detective Gabriel Syme finds himself drawn
into a world that has gone beyond humanity when he infiltrates the society of
militant anarchists and is elected "Thursday", one of the members
of the Central European Council of seven monarchs.

Dreamlike,
prophetic and frequently funny, the novel attacks contemporary pessimism and
through a bizarre series of pursuits and unmaskings, returns Syme - and us -
to reality more aware of its beauty, promise and creative potential.

"A powerful
picture of the loneliness and bewilderment which each of us encounters in his
single-handed struggle with the universe."
- - C.S. Lewis